Operation Manual

Chapter 3: Planning the project

You can design, author, and build media projects in Adobe Encore CS3 for high-definition Blu-ray Disc and standard-

definition DVD. Encore gives you options to burn directly to a disc or other types of output for disc replication. As an

added bonus, you can export Blu-ray and DVD projects to Flash format for interactive viewing on the web.

Planning the content

About planning

Thefirsttaskofauthoringtheprojectisplanning.Thisplanningcanbeasminimalasdecidingtouseatemplateto

organize your family’s vacation photos and video, or as robust as using project-management software to coordinate

a production team creating an interactive kiosk.

Whatever the scope of planning, you should understand what the project will contain and how you want to present

it. By the end of the planning stage, you should have a good understanding of the following parameters.

The navigation scheme

Awell-producedprojectemploysahierarchyofnavigationthatgivestheviewerclearandeasyaccesstothecontent.

Think through your project. After you decide which clips you want to include, you need to determine how the viewer

will access those clips. Whether you use a spreadsheet or a pencil sketch, it is worth the time to draft your navigation

scheme before you start.

The intended playback environment

Is the project intended for television viewing? Will it play unattended in a kiosk? Is it for use in an educational setting

on computers? The playback environment affects your approach to navigation and the design of the menus as well

as the content. If the project will be used only on a computer (on the desktop or in a web browser), you can include

ROM content that a television DVD or Blu-ray player cannot access. For instance, you can include PDFs of exercises

in an educational DVD to be used on the computer. If you’re planning to export your project to Flash format, you

can embed web links that connect your project to other areas in your website.

Types and amount of content to be included

To make certain decisions—for instance, about disc size and video data rate—you need to know how much content

you must fit on the disc and what type it is (such as standard-definition or high-definition video). Small projects that

include mostly audio might fit on a single-layer DVD, whereas projects containing feature-length movies and many

supplemental materials might require a dual-layer or dual-sided DVD or a Blu-ray disc.